


He Called You By Your Real Name

by elrhiarhodan



Series: Elrhiarhodan's 2019 Personal Writing Challenge [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bond to the Rescue, Bond/Merlin friendship, Eggsy in Danger, James Bond Backstory - Canonical, M/M, Mention of Alec Trevelyn, Mention of Bond/Q, Mention of Eggsy as Galahad, Mention of Mallory as M, Merlin backstory, Merwin, Reference to Goldeneye, Reference to the destruction of Kingsman in TGC, Skyfall, ambiguous ending, not TGC compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 06:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18148070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: Merlin and Bond meet on the Vauxhall Bridge, right across from the SIS Building.  Merlin needs a favor from his old friend.





	He Called You By Your Real Name

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short version of a story that I've had in my head for several years, since I found Our Friends In The North and discovered that Mark Strong and Daniel Craig are good friends.

Two AM and the Vauxhall Bridge is mostly deserted. Mostly, not completely, however.

There's a man at the apex of the bridge, leaning over the railing, gazing at the SIS Building that's perched on the south bank like some massive, mutated Art Deco turtle. It's an unusual place to linger. Security Services routinely patrol the bridge, encouraging lingerers to move on. But no one disturbs this man as he stands and watches and waits. The night is clear, and the full moon is bright as a klieg light, reflecting on the sluggish waters of the River Thames.

He waits, undisturbed for fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. A half-hour passes, and then another. The moon is falling behind the London skyline before another man joins him. 

"Ye're late."

The newcomer chuckles, the sound tinged more with bitterness than humor. "Sorry. I'd heard you were dead."

"I'd say that the rumors have been greatly exaggerated, but it had been a rather close call. And yer one to talk about being dead. Seven years ago, I went to yer funeral. What a farce that had been. But I figured someone from yer school days should be there, if just to lend a touch of veracity to the moment. Yer were never suited for the beachcomber life, Jamie."

That surprises the other man. "You knew where I was?"

"Of course. Took a bit of digging, but I found ye eventually. Figured ye'd either stay dead or ye'd resurface when ye were ready. But I have to say, it is good to see ye, Jamie."

"Don't call me that, _Hamish_."

"Why not, it's yer name. Except 'Jamie, Jamie Bond' doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it."

"No, of course it doesn't." Only a very few people had ever been allowed to call him 'Jamie'. His parents have been dead for more years than they'd been alive; Kinkade, the gamekeeper at Skyfall had died quietly in his sleep last year. That just leaves Hamish Munroe, who'd shared rooms with James at Fettes College, in Edinburgh. 

They'd been fourteen when they'd met and detested each other on sight. Hamish had been a scholarship boy from the Glasgow housing schemes, smart as a whip and graced with a chip on his shoulder bigger than James'. 

It had taken six months before that had changed, before active antipathy turned to reluctant - and then active friendship. James can remember the moment that happened, down to the day and the hour. He'd been sick with grief on the anniversary of his parents' death, longing to go home to Skyfall, but his bitch of an aunt had refused to give the school permission to let James leave the school. Hamish had disappeared that morning, called to the headmaster's office, but James hadn't cared. That had been a fairly common occurrence, and each time it had happened, James had hoped it meant that the angry little schemie was going to be sent home.

He'd been sulking in his room, steadily drinking from a bottle of whisky he'd "found", when a prefect had knocked on the door, telling James that he he'd been order to escort him to the headmaster's office, too.

James couldn't think of any particular offense he'd committed that week that would have required such a high level of discipline. He'd nearly started a fight with the prefect, who'd done nothing to deserve his ire, except for breathing, but managed to control his temper.

Fucking Hamish had been sitting in the anteroom to the headmaster's office, his stupid face streaked with tears and James had thought that maybe the gods had smiled on him. Maybe the brat was getting sent down. But that hadn't been the case. The headmaster told him that Hamish's parents were now dead, killed in some act of violence that he'd rather not go into, and would James please endeavor to be kinder to Hamish, as he has no family anymore.

James hadn't like the surge of empathy he'd felt, hadn't liked that some fucking know it all adult thought he'd needed to be told to be _kind_. But when he walked out of the head's office and saw Hamish sitting rock still, his face wiped clean but his eyes dead, he'd told the boy to come along.

They'd finished the bottle of whisky and another - one that Hamish had been keeping under his mattress. James told Hamish how his parents had died - an avalanche in Switzerland. Hamish said that his parents had been executed by some fucking mobster who had tried to rape his mum and hadn't liked when his da had taken a knife to the bastard's balls.

Funny how tragedy draws the unlikeliest of souls together.

They'd parted ways after Fettes; James going to college in Switzerland, Hamish joining the Army, and they hadn't kept in touch. James had only found out that Hamish had joined that fucking independent intelligent services after an operation had gone sour, and MI-6 had needed Kingsman's help to rescue two of their own.

The two agencies had a mutual aid pact, but had only used it in the direst of situations - like that time when he and Alec Trevelyn had been held by a splinter IRA group. Merlin had walked into the Ulster safe house, bold as fucking brass, taken the pair into "custody pending execution". Neither James nor Merlin had said anything until they'd gotten to the coast and a waiting Zodiac. 

Merlin had handed them each a life jacket and said, "Thank god the Provos have stood down. That rig would never have fooled them."

Alec had just nodded, mostly still in shock, but James had said, "Hamish? What the fuck are you doing here?"

"My job. If ye're find yerself in the need of a new suit after yer debriefing, stop by Kingsman on Savile Row. Tell Andrew that ye need to talk to Merlin."

In the twenty years since, at least until James had "died" in Turkey, he'd met Hamish for a pint every year, on the anniversary of the deaths of their parents. Maybe it had been the destruction of Skyfall or the changing of the guard at MI-6, but James had found it impossible to reestablish the connection with his past. When he'd heard about the destruction of the shop on Savile Row and the mysterious bombing of an estate in Herefordshire, he'd mourned the loss of the last connection he'd had to his childhood.

But two hours ago, M had sent him a message, telling him to meet one of "those bloody tailors" on the Vauxhall Bridge. M hadn't said he was to meet with the Kingsman Quartermaster, but his own quartermaster had done a bit of recon - the cameras on the bridge are the best money can buy - and James had been startled to see that his contact was none other than a presumed-dead man. Uncharacteristically, James needed some time to get his emotions under control before heading out. 

"Why are we here, Merlin?" Using the codename moves the conversation into the realm of "official business".

"One of our own has gone missing, 007. Arthur has reached out to M, who has offered the agency's assistance."

"Finally returning that favor?"

Merlin shrugs. "We don't keep count for things like this." He pulls a packet from the inner pocket of his Barbour jacket. "His code name is Galahad, he's one of our best and brightest."

James looks at the photo attached to the file. This version of Galahad is a young man, and despite the well-groomed look and the sharp suit, he's not the kind usually recruited by Kingsman. "What happened?"

"He was on a mission in the Urals, trying to disrupt the flow of rare earth minerals to North Korea, when we'd lost contact with him - that was around eight PM. Within hours, we'd started picking up chatter about a captured intelligence operative for sale to the highest bidder."

"Shit." James now intensely regrets wasting time. "A formal auction?" 

Merlin nods. "Our best intelligence says that the sale is happening in Arkhangelesk in about twelve hours, and all bidders will need to be present. I believe ye're familiar with the region."

Of course he is - it's where he'd lost Alec for the first time. 

"Kingsman has set up a reserve account, the numbers are in the packet I've given ye."

"What's my maximum?"

"No limit."

"Are you kidding me? You're giving me a blank check to rescue an agent that had been foolish enough to get captured?"

There's a stillness in Merlin's face, but his eyes blaze with something terrible and fearsome. James suddenly realizes that he hasn't been this close to his own death since he'd tumbled from the top of a moving train in Turkey. "No one called ye foolish when ye'd allowed a bunch of gun-totting thugs to capture ye back in '98."

"My apologies. I'll get your agent back."

"Please."

"It's personal, isn't it?"

Hamish nods. "Frankly, it'll break what's left of my heart if he comes home in a bodybag, or if he doesn't come home at all."

"Then I'll bring him home to you, and you'll buy me a drink, and we'll talk about the old days, when the world was a lot simpler."

"The world wasn't simpler, Jamie. We were just too young and stupid to realize that."

James nods and heads across the bridge, back to the big ugly building squatting on the Thames. He doesn't have much time, not if he's going to keep his promise.

_FIN_


End file.
